November 18, 2021 • 48 mins
After a life of civic hacking outside the system through efforts like vTaiwan, Audrey Tang, now Digital Minister of Taiwan, speaks with Baratunde about how to use digital tools to include people in more direct, participatory, democratic practices and her design philosophy of “fast, fair, fun.” She shows how tech can help government be more responsive to and collaborative with its citizens.
Guest: Audrey Tang
Bio: Digital Minister of Taiwan, open-source software contributor, poetician
Online: Taiwan’s Public Digital Innovation Space; On Twitter @audreyt and the hashtag #FastFairFun
Go to howtocitizen.com for transcripts, our email newsletter, and your citizen practice.
ACTIONS
- PERSONALLY REFLECT
Flexing our personal power
When have you felt justified pushing against an authority in your life? How did you do it and did it achieve your goal? If not, why not? If so, were there other unintended consequences? If you could go back in time, would you change your actions in any way?
- BECOME INFORMED
What is Open Government?
Get informed about this idea of "open government." Learn more about Audrey’s work at digitalminister.tw. If you want to go deeper, read the book Open Democracy by Hélène Landemore. It's about centering ordinary citizens in the democratic process. Find it in our online bookstore bookshop.org/shop/howtocitizen. And search social media for the hashtag #OpenGovernment to discover other related thinkers and doers helping us govern ourselves.
- PUBLICLY PARTICIPATE
Public Forums
Practice sharing your voice on an issue you care about in a public forum (not just social media). For example, you can comment on upcoming federal regulations at regulations.gov. But the real action is local, so join a participatory budgeting initiative by searching online for “participatory budgeting near me”, or attend a virtual or live city or neighborhood council meeting and offer feedback during the public comment section. Use your voice to influence a public issue. Flex your power!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a podcast
that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
This season is all about tech and how it can
bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
you the people using technology for so much more than
revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us.
(00:22):
Citizen Here in the US, the idea of social media
and democracy, well, I'm not sure they even belong in
the same sentence. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and read it.
They tend to just be echo chambers with an abundant
(00:42):
supply of the most niche groups, so you can be
surrounded by your own choir. But there is a country
where this isn't necessarily the case. Today. We're going to Taiwan.
I repeat thai Wan. The Taiwanese government has essentially put
(01:03):
its entire democratic system online and it works now. Of course,
they have some exceptional policies in place, like they've got
universal broadband as a human right, virtual town halls and
a phone line get this where citizens can talk to
(01:24):
real people in the government about their problems. And if
that still isn't enough for a Taiwanese citizen to have
their voice heard, they can schedule on one on one
meeting with the person at the center of all this.
Every Tuesday from ten am to ten pm, the Digital
Minister of Taiwan, Audrey Tongue, holds open office hours. Her
(01:48):
only request, you got to allow the conversation to be
recorded and uploaded online in the name of radical transparency.
And look, I'm not a citizen of Taiwan, but she
pen sold me in for some office hours of our own.
I say this without exaggeration. Audrey's accomplishments started at birth
(02:11):
due to a heart defect. As a toddler, she had
to train her body to keep her heart rate down
by practicing Daoist meditation techniques as a toddler. And when
it came to her education after discovering the Internet, that
did drop out once when I was eight, once when
I was ten, once when I was twelve. So anyway, yeah,
(02:33):
I I've had three kindergarten, six primary schools, and one
year of middle high serial drop out, if you will.
When I was in middle school, student was for a scene.
I talked to the head of the school saying, look,
I discovered this thing called the wild Web, and I
found out that the cutting edge knowledge is being created
(02:55):
on the web, and my textbooks were willfully out of date.
The head of the school, after she listened to me
for a couple of minutes describing this new thing called
the wild web, she said, okay, tomorrow, and you don't
have to go to my school anymore. Instead of eight
hours after school, you can't spend sixteen hours a day
during these She started her first company at age fifteen,
(03:20):
and that eventually led to her joining a community of
civic hackers technologists to innovate without permission, but in this
case not for financial gain or to prove they can
break into a system, but instead for the public good.
In after a series of protests in Taiwan, she was
appointed Taiwan's first Digital Minister, going from outsider to insider
(03:46):
hacker to cabinet minister. She's a believer in an advocate
for open data, open governance, and civil society government collaboration
without further ado. Audrey Tom Hello, Audrey, greetings, good luck
at time, good local time. Nice to meet you. Thank
(04:08):
you for joining us. You are the first cabinet minister
I will have ever had on any show of mine.
This is very exciting for me. Here's too many more
so it sounds like you grew up online? Is that
a fair way of describing choosing your education to happen
this way? Especially? That's right, I would say I I
migrated to the Internet when I was fourteen ish, so
(04:30):
I'm not a digital native, but a young immigrants, if
you will, young digital immigrant, digital migrant. So so what
has that meant for you? To have such early, intense
and regular access to this new world formerly new world?
And it's time? I was motivated by a open research
(04:50):
questions why do people who have never met each other
trust each other so quickly online? It's a phenomena called
swift trust. Of course, in the more antisocial coiners of
social media, it also means swift distrust. People come to
hate each other very intensely. Yes, we do. How does
that come about? I was very much motivated by that question,
(05:12):
so I found it a startup A year after I
dropped out and become a kind of serial entrepreneur and
explored through various ways. My first startup was the Taiwanese
equivalent of eBay, and later on moved to found many
other companies and all explored how to get people trust
(05:35):
each other reasonably online instead of on the spaces where
it's more antisocial that that's been my research topic for
the past twenty five years. I guess what are your
conclusions right now about the answer to that question, Well,
it needs to be fast, fair, and fun simultaneously. If
(05:56):
a space is fast in getting people's ideas into collective intelligence,
if the common good the shared value is derived quickly
in a fair fashion. And finally, if for each minute
of participation people feel there's an intrinsic fun in it,
then the phosphere fun ensures approse social interaction online fast, fair,
(06:21):
and fun. They all start with F, so there's like
a poetry to it. Like it the fun part. For example,
we apply to our counter disinformation strategy and time when
they call it humor over a rumor, Oh oh, I
like that one. UM. Early in your career, you were
part of the formation of something known as GOV zero.
(06:44):
What was GOV zero and why was it needed? So
GO zero was and still is. UM this idea of
forking the government. Now fork in free software means taking something,
not hitting it off, but taking it to a different direction,
with the hope, of course, that one day it's merged
(07:05):
back in. So for all the government websites in taide
one something that g o V that ke w oh yeah,
that gov websites. Yeah right. The zero folks just built
parallel shadow government websites. So for each digital service that
the people doesn't quite like, into the protesting they demonstrate
(07:26):
by changing oh to a zero in the browser bar,
and you get into the shadow government, which is more fast,
fair and fun. Okay, I want to play that back
and make sure I'm understanding what you're saying. Everyone listening
to this, we understand the concept of a government website
at that geo V. As you mentioned, they're not always
the greatest websites that many of us have experienced, So
(07:48):
go zero with you all. Initially we're doing was building
that zero websites, you know, that were mirror versions of
these government websites, offering the same information and services, but better, faster, fairer,
and more fun. That's exactly right. So for example, last February,
we were rationing out medical great masks. We all remember
(08:11):
the mask rationing. Yes, that's right, And and there's there's
a government website that tallies the availability of masks in
each and every pharmacy. Now, the equivalent of zero website
is an interactive map where you can see very quickly
which pharmacy near your residents still have some instack. And
as you queue in line, there's also chatbots voice assistance
(08:35):
that would ensure this fair distribution of masks. And it
is of course more fun. And this entire effort, this
this civic hacking effort with all volunteer that's right, Uh,
the volunteers. The number in like tens of thousands. And
once people think of something that the government isn't doing
very well, instead of protesting, we just do a demonstration
(08:58):
as a demo, like showing everyone that hey, this could
be done this much better. That's okay. That's a novel,
a creative and hyper useful form of activism where you
just you show them up and you do it better.
I want to know how you got into politics. A
big moment for you was the Sunflower Revolution. Right, several
(09:23):
hundred Taiwanese students are still occupying the island's parliament. They're
protesting against a wide ranging trade deal signed between the
Taiwanese government and China. A much seventies. One single congressman declare,
(09:43):
without anything, liberation. We've seen thirty seconds now don't let
the name Sunflower Revolution fool you. The path to a
digital democracy wasn't easy. As is often the case, big
change takes an upright in March, a group of students
(10:07):
climbed over the fence and occupied Taiwan's equivalent of the U. S.
Capitol building. Now, before your mind goes there is not
what you think. They didn't have guns. They had ethernet
cads and a plan to talk and be hurt students
far from you know, violently protesting. They occupied the Parliament's
(10:30):
t Terrian seat and started to delibrates the C S
S T A to trade agreement line by line with
anyone who cared to show up. Yeah, they were literally
reading through parliamentary decisions line by line in hopes of
finding consensus. But law enforcement they didn't see it that way.
(10:52):
M M. Their solution radical transparency. Audrey live stream the
occupation to the streets of Taipei for the public to witness,
so that people can see before their own eyes on
a large projection screen outside the street. Was actually happening
(11:15):
was a deliberation led by citizens within the parliament. So
there's no room for rumor to grab. Had we not
wired up the streets around the parliament. There will be
cols because people will believe in for example, the rumors
about the students. We've seen the parliament was being attacked.
There's a bunch of people who want to rush the
police because they falsely believed that the students were in addenda.
(11:40):
But because we weard it up sufficiently quickly, people can
check that it's actually not what's happening. This moment was
basically analog of zero. Instead of a shadow website, they
created a whole shadow parliament, showing the politicians in their
own house how it's done. And they did this day
(12:02):
in and day out, working to come up with their
own rough consensus on each issue, including the trade agreement. Then,
after three weeks of occupation, Parliament agreed to provide oversight
for trade deals with China and the occupation ended. But
the movement didn't stop there. In fact, many leaders in
(12:22):
government got on board. Two years later, the election outsted
the ruling party and made history by electing the first
female president sigh England. The government realized they had to
listen to the people, and who did they turn to?
Audrey Tom. This led to her role as Taiwan's first
(12:43):
Digital Minister at just thirty five years old, opening the
doors of Parliament to the hackers, the civic hackers, the
civic hackers. That's a very important acknowledges. Yes, not all hackers,
civic hackers. After the break of poetry reading by Minister Tongue, Yes, poetry.
(13:20):
You're not just a minister in department. You're the digital minister.
What does that job mean? And was there a digital
minister before you? No, I'm the first digital minister. I
wrote my own job description. Can you share your I
think I've read some of this job description, but can
you share your job description with me? Sure it's pinned
(13:42):
on my Twitter actually, so I'll just read it. When
we see the Internet of things, let's make it an
internet of bees. We see virtual reality, let's make it
a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let's make
it collaborative learning. When we see user experience, let's make
(14:06):
it about human experience. And whenever we hear that the
singularity is, let us always remember the plurality is here.
That's poetry, it is, I mean, politician, you're just call
yourself a poetician. You know you are full of innovations
(14:29):
and surprises. Minister One of the things that I've heard
about and the most excited to spend our time on
today is V Taiwan. Can you define what V Taiwan
is and how it's used in your society. V Taiwan
(14:50):
was actually the work of Meat as civic hacker UM
and I became Digital Minister around two years after which
so during those two years, for example, we worked on
a way to get people's voices where people can write
their own nuanced ideas about emerging issues like at the
(15:11):
time Uber. When Uber first came to Taiwan, they work
with drivers with no professional license called sharing economy, and
this of course incited many texts chriver to start the protest,
and instead of people just shouting at each other like
a showdown, we built a space called polish through Echaiwan
(15:33):
project where people can say I care about insurance and
up voted and downloaded each other, but with no reply button,
and then the rough consensus, just like in the Sunflower movement,
end up getting ratified. So Uber is now a legal
taxi company in Taiwan. You're describing an online community platform
(15:54):
where people are sharing their opinions, their thoughts, their feedback
or public services sometimes or private services like Uber, but
you're using terms like rough consensus. And I experience a
platform that lets me share my opinions about all kinds
of things. It's called Twitter, it's called Facebook, but the
word consensus never comes to mind. So can you talk
(16:19):
to me about how the Taiwan, in doing this surveying
of the public and collecting all kinds of input, doesn't
descend into a Twitter or Facebook like disaster zone. Well,
as I mentioned, there's no reply button, right, no reply
button that'll do it? Okay, Yeah, that that's that's really
(16:42):
d D trick um Impolis, which you can check out,
is a free software tool instead of the reply button. Uh,
there's a vote down vote, and there's this visualization. Don't worry.
I know this is a podcast and you can't see
the visualization's Audrey talking about. So I'm gonna help you.
(17:04):
V Taiwan uses something called quadratic voting to build rough consensus.
Think of two axes, and X that runs horizontally and
a Y that runs vertically. Yeah, I'm taking you back
to middle school. The X axis is your yea or nay,
and the y is how strongly you feel about your yea,
your name. So Let's say your town is voting on
(17:25):
a citywide compost collection measure. On one end of your
X axis would be a yes. Compost on the other end, Nope,
I ain't composting. But it doesn't stop there because the
Y axis gauges how strong do you feel about those votes.
Maybe you plan to vote no because you don't know
that much about composting, but you heard it might stink
(17:46):
up the city. You'd probably fall somewhere in the middle
of the Y axis. The same could be said for
someone who's voting yes. They don't know much, but they
hear it's quote unquote good for the environment, they too
would fall some where in the middle of the Y axes.
Once again, it doesn't stop there because users can continue
to submit statements on composting, and the more you participate
(18:10):
by up or down voting those statements, the more refined
your placement gets within this grid. So composting will take
the equivalent of one million cars off the road that
might lead to an up vote, or the budget will
come out of the parks department that could lead to
a down vote. The point is, as users start to
(18:31):
form opinions on composting, wherever you fall on these scales,
you get placed within one of the four quadrants, and
as the votes tally up, you start to see clusters
of like minded people, clusters that would be invisible to
you in a purely binary guest no world. And that's
where the rough consensus begins to form. This moment brought
(18:53):
to you by Edge of Tune day, You're welcome. So
it became a challenge, a game to find the things
that could convince people at the other aisle, and people
managed to agree on so after three weeks or so
of unlike deliberation, we would end up always with this
picture where people agree to disagree on a few ideological
(19:16):
things like whether Ubert qualified as sharing economy or just
give economy, But for most of the ideas, most people
agree actually with most of their neighbors. It's just a
more antisocial corner of social media or mainstream media does
not report those consensus around registration, insurance, not undercutting exist meters,
and so on. I've heard many social scientists say that
(19:41):
we actually agree a lot more than we know, and
it sounds like you've got a system which visualizes that.
It shows us how close we are to our neighbors,
even if they're not our physical neighbors. Is it fair
to say you've kind of gamified consensus building. Yes, it's fair.
And I would also say that people compete to get
(20:04):
other people to agree to them, not by posting compromises,
but posting innovations like new ideas that would unify people
previously of different aisles. But if people keep shouting at
each other on the ideological points and there's no remaining
bandwidth to innovate like that, If the government is faced
(20:27):
with one hundred decisions and kind of a random easy
number legislative policy regulatory for how many of them are
you using v Taiwan two be open to citizen input.
So the answer is all the petitions, all the regulations,
(20:47):
all the budget items are up for public commentary and debate.
After I moved into the cabinet as the Digital Minister, Vita,
I want kind of get merged back into the governments
and we call it Join Join the g O v
the t W. We also have a petition side like
(21:07):
we the People, where people can post new ideas. Instead
of waiting for the government to propose, people can propose
their own ideas, like changing the time zone of Taiwan
or banning plastic straws for bubble sees takeouts, which are
a real petitions. Uh. And then um, they get the
(21:28):
ministry of point by point answer if they get five
joining signature and and how you can since my um, surprise,
my incredulity even a little bit, How seriously do people
who work in government take all this beautiful visualized consensus
(21:52):
of the people who don't work in government. Is it
just like, oh, that's cute, the public wants something anyway,
I'm gonna do what I want to do? Or is
there accountability to follow through on these public consensus conclusions? Well,
if the petition did not get five thousand signatures, then
(22:13):
often it gets ignored. That's of course true, because it
means it more or less serves only a handful of people,
and these people have not yet articulated the common purpose.
So the majority of petitions did not meet five thousands thresholds.
But after it meets the five thousand threshold, there is
(22:34):
regulatory level commitment from each minister that they will send
a team what we call participation officers or pos, and
around a hundred of these people in each ministry. They
are legally bound to answer it in the point by
point fashion. And if this spuns across different ministries or
(22:55):
could only be solved in the inter agency way, then
I personally have most collaborative meetings twice amount to get
those ideas from the civil society that benefits more than
one ministry, because a single ministry cannot promise to answer
them all. What type of regulation or rule or government action?
(23:18):
More broadly are you most proud of or excited about?
That is the product of a v Taiwan process. One
of the earlier successes is, of course the ratification of
UBER and later on extending that to a more general
platform economic principle. And there's also many environment related issues
(23:43):
like banning plastic strolls from take how the public say
that's actually something that's ratified And the petitioner was I
think not even eighteen, just turned seventeen when she petitioned that.
How do you make sure that a system like this
is it gamed or abused? Someone just gets a bunch
(24:05):
of bots or a bunch of their friends too jack
up the activity on a particular petition point to make
sure it gets taken seriously, quote unquote, First of all,
one has to register using the SMS number if someone
try to get five thousand SIM cards, they will get
noticed by the NIM only launching folks very quickly. So
(24:27):
I'm not worried about that. And I imagine you know
those people. Yeah, I do have those people, that's right.
So each person, of course participate using the SMS number,
but they can to student names as so the petitioner,
the young one that's this plastic straw banding. We only
knew her as I love elephants and elephants love me
(24:49):
for a very long time until she decided to show up.
This is killing me. This is amazing. Um. What do
you think v Taiwan has done for the relationship of
the Taiwanese people to each other and to their government. Yeah,
(25:09):
I believe that this idea of social innovation. Previously, people think,
oh they can join this community in their neighborhoods and
to maybe redesign the park together or things like that.
But I guess joint platform show that people who care
about the same thing can also get this neighborhood's relationship
(25:31):
very quickly online and act in a way that they
would on the physical town hall. We have this digital
public infrastructure that functions the same as the town hall
so that they're not forced to deliberate about important civic
topics in the digital equivalent of nightclubs like Facebook. You
(25:53):
just call Facebook and nightclub. This is just amazing. It's amazing. Um,
I don't know how many future forward looking innovations you
could put into one person into one position, but you were,
you were going for some kind of metal, some kind
of gold medal for maximum innovation in civics and people
(26:17):
powered government. Uh. We we got blockchain up in here
now with the theory, and we got quadratic voting, We've
got participatory budgeting, civic hacking. This is like the mecca
of of innovation and government services. But I also I'm
trying to understand how within Taiwan do you have a
(26:39):
sense for what share of the public is engaged in
this new digitally enabled form of self governing. I believe
most of the people are aware that they can actually
set agenda for the ministry level decisions around pandemic prevention,
especially just by picking up the phone. So a lot
(27:00):
majority of people, I would say tens of millions of people,
because our ENTI bearer is really low. If you pick
up your phone and call it this toll free number
one night you too, and speak your mind about how
you would like our counter epidemic effort to get better,
and a sympathetic listener from the call center records that
(27:20):
and write it up, and the next day on the
two PM press conference, your idea may be implemented very
quickly on this live stream because we've lowered the participation threshold,
and the phone lines just flooded with like foul language
and hates because I'm just trying to imagine it's deployed
in the US, and I don't hear thoughtful rants, you
(27:43):
know people. I just see people screaming falsehoods into their
phone all day. Yeah, and that's because of the frustration
of not getting properly listened to. Right, it's venting, uh,
this previous frustration. But because there's more than two million
cars last year alone, we take them very seriously. Right
(28:06):
at last April, there was a young boy that calls saying, hey,
you're rationing out mass But all I got was pink
ones and all the boys in my class got navy blue.
Once I don't want to wear pink to school, I
refused to go to school. Do something about it. And
then the very next day on two p M press conference,
all the medical officers, including Ministruction were Pink and Mstr Chin.
(28:27):
That helps. Mr even said Pink Panther was my childhood hero.
So so the boy became the most employing his class
for oh, he has the color that the heroes were,
and the heroes hero it is there and and our
the idea that I could call and leave a voicemail
(28:49):
and know that I was heard because a pretty high
ranking government official. In fact, many the next day in
this case are referencing my message. Do you have have
some very widely deployed natural language processing running too? Makes
sense of all this audio not just the texting and
(29:09):
the typing I get it's already kind of a machine readable,
but just a bunch of audio files as well. How
are you processing that? And very large call center and
it's not voicemail. Actually I think more than nine of
them get into a sympathetic listener. So um, it's like
a human being a human being professional and listening and
(29:30):
answering in real time, okay, And we work on the
assistant to support them like frequently ask questions and so on.
By the end of the day, is that people who
want to contribute to the society. Many volunteers actually working
in these call sentens. Okay, okay, this is Um. I
(29:50):
I don't know whether I'm very proud of what you're
doing in Taiwan or just exceedingly disappointed at what we're
not doing in the state. The fact that I'm responding
with such shock and awe and your delivery is just
the calmest thing, like like it's natural, of course. Yeah,
we're just staff, sympathetic people on phone lines for our
(30:13):
citizens to talk like. I can't even finish saying that
without laughing. Again. Congratulations, minister, Um. Can you tell me
about presidential Hackathan? Sure? And I'm aware that we're in
the future. Um, thank you for acknowledging that I'm not
entirely on another planet, just in a different time zone.
(30:36):
That's right, we're time zone travelers. So yeah. The presidential
Every year, the president gave trophies to five teams, each
one working on the sort of good zero like civic
innovation for three months and through quadratic voting, Uh, they
proved that their ideas has marriage in a smaller region.
(30:59):
Helemeta Sin for example, using a app to motivate people
instead of buying new plastic bottles using existing bortos to
get free refills from the local community to reduce common footprint.
East Monscale experiments, once they received the trophy from the President,
certainly become presidential promises, so I, like any executive agenda,
(31:20):
must be implemented within the presidential term. For example, readd
our entire universal healthcare system which is pretty to begin with,
to allow cure code helen medicine, which is very useful
not just during the pandemic, but also for the remote islands,
indigenous places and so one and all thanks to a
(31:41):
small scale experiment by a very remote island which suffer
a helicopter crash and decided to innovate. If you've been
running the hakathon for four years and there are five winners,
that's twenty winning ideas. That's right. How many of those
twenty have actually been implemented by the president or other
parts of the government. UM I believe nineteen are implemented
(32:05):
right now. And the other one because it requires collaboration
with the anti money laundering people. It's a mission learning
algorithm to preemptively, like Minority Report, identify money laundering activities
that still in the works. Are there people who are
(32:26):
opposed to what you're doing with within Taiwanese society? Are
there folks like this, we don't want this, We don't
want the computers use this way, This is too much
for government? Like is there resistance to whatso far sounds
like a very happy, very positive, very effective experience. In
(32:47):
a sense, we are the resistance so um to to
answer a question directly, there are people who initially feel
threatened by the vito it's use of deliberative democracy, and
they are the professional representatives in the parliament or city council.
They rightfully feel excluded from this crowd law agenda setting thing,
(33:13):
and kind of fear that it will create populism to
take their well deliberated norms away and just pass whatever
the majority of people seems happy with and destroy democracy
and things like that. So it was a real fear
in twenty four seine. But then after twenty sixteen, which
I became the Digital Ministry, introduced those platforms, they start
(33:37):
to see that we're not taking over the legislative power.
What we're doing is essentially doing additional research and development
before something that's ratified. What we've done is to get
people's real feelings which cannot all get passed through the
parliament to get people with the real feelings and needs
(34:00):
and requirements and want to also join as co creators
to propose solution by at the end of the day,
the allocation of budget resources, the presidential mandates and so on,
these remain intact and democratically accountable. So in design thinking terms,
we take care of the defined and the discovery part
(34:23):
the first diamond, but the development and the delivery are
still in the representative democracy. We have a similar process
here in the US. It doesn't involve as much technology.
It's a group of people called lobbyists and they figure
out what the legislators are supposed to do. It doesn't
always match the will of the people on the ground,
(34:44):
but it's probably just some bugs in the code and
we're working it out. I'm sure we'll be as representative
as Taiwan sometime in the near future. It's the great
American experiment. Now I know it doesn't sound like it,
(35:05):
but I can confirm that we do indeed live on
the same planet when we come back. We talked about
Audrey's future outlook on the time when the government and
how this can hopefully be applied to the United States.
(35:31):
Mm hmmm, where do you see Taiwan's government in twenty years, Um,
it will be higher, I guess, stronger, faster together, higher
by about sixty centimeters. Um. It's a joke because towns
caught between the Eurasian plate and the Philippines sea plate
(35:53):
on the signs, and we got a lot of earthquakes
when they bumped together. But through yeah, I wasn't. I
was like, I got a rising sea levels jokes. It's
rising plate tectonics joke. So it's rising faster than sea
levels at this moment anyway. So yeah, but but those
earthquakes um is metaphoric. Right. We're caught between very different
(36:15):
ideologies UM. For example, the privacy and personal data protection.
We've got people who strongly believe in a more civiliance
capitalism ideas of using data and it's called the US style.
But there's also a sizable chunk who remember and believes
in the authority Hearian days in Taiwan, who believe in
(36:36):
a more state controlled, state sponsored way of data use
and so on. So we have to endure those ideological
earthquakes and always innovate. For example, merriage equality, I think
we're still the only Asian jurisdiction that implemented merriage quality.
We use the joint platform, among other methods, to get
(36:57):
people's collaborative preferences into a new invention where when two
same sex people wed, they only wed as individuals, but
their families don't wet. There's no kinship relation. And this
innovation UH is felt as good enough for everyone. So
after twenty yes, after many such innovations at the top
(37:18):
of Taiwan the Yushan Mountain, which grows by three sentimentaries
every year, I guess we'll just keep growing and pointing
sat work. Where do you see UH the U S
government In twenty years, I guess the great American experiment
of reinventing democracy digitally will will catch up. I mean,
(37:38):
there really is no reason why people have to viciously
attack each other online. It's not a function of the
people or the water, is the function of the space. UH.
In design terms, this is UH an anti social design
or pro social design. So once people get into this
um habit of posting online, I guess people will be
(38:02):
able to make the difference between the digital equivalent of
town halls, the public infrastructure that I've just mentioned, which
in TWI sixteen, for the first time in Taiwan's history,
is classified as infrastructure budget. And I understand that the
US to doing something very similar at this very moment,
and people would not feel natural anymore to have pacivic
(38:24):
discussion in the digital nightclubs with you know, people shouting
to get heard and smoke field rooms with toxic drinks
and private bouncers. Toxic drinks and private bouncers. Again, the
best description of Facebook I've ever heard. This idea of
rough consensus. To me, it feels I like it because
(38:45):
it's ambitious with humility, right, you know, I think a
lot of folks think we want everybody to agree with
each other. Will never get that, so why bother and
the good enough nature of the consensus. We're in desperate
need of even rough consensus here in the US we
(39:08):
have a very big political divide. Are there things you
think that our political system can learn from what you've
learned in the Timeanese political systems? There was a police
conversation of virtual town hall in Bowling Green, Kentucky a
couple of years ago Bowling Green, Kentucky. Yes, and regardless
(39:29):
of which party they identify, with everyone thinks that we
should put the arts into science, technology, engineering, and maths
instead of stand let's make esteem. That's something people agree on.
There should be more broadband vendor choices for a better service,
and so on. So look, I do believe that those
(39:50):
ideologies help shape some of the debates. But there are
like the arts teachers or the broadband connections. There are
things that are just you know, infrastructure. There are things
that in a cultural or scientific or educational sense, that's
broadly a rough consensus. It's just that you have to
ask about that specifically, and then you get those little
(40:13):
hanging fruits. And when the mayors are the township leaders
or governors adopt those idea, it also improved their chance
of getting reelected. Mm hmm. Well, how do you think
about the the role of technology versus the role of
humans in implementing positive, useful, pro social technology to help
(40:40):
us govern ourselves better. I believe technologies aren't here to
connect people with other people, so which is why I
call a assistive intelligence. They play the role of my
eye class for example, which enabled me to see you better,
but my eyeglass never pops out A uncle ustible advertised
(41:01):
mephor ten seconds, right, that would not be aligned to
my values. I'm sure someone is designing you know, sponsored
glasses very soon, right, and I can fix it myself
or take it to some repaired person uh nearby. And
that means that it's accountable to also the person using it.
(41:21):
It's not locking uh in my choice of vendors, and
so I don't have to pay someone a million dollar
license features to fix my eye glass. So with these
important UM guarantees of assistiveness, which includes of course accountability
and alignment, it means that technologies stay customizable, which is
(41:43):
why it's not perfect, it's just good enough. And how
to make good enough better lines in the edges right,
and the people closest to the pain for the people
using those technologies, there must be the ultimate arbit of
how to modify those technologies. So without that, it's not
assistive intelligence anymore, it would be authoritarian intelligence. And I
(42:07):
think both paths are possible into some degree. Both paths
will be pursued depending on which part of the world
we're talking about, even in the same time zone, yes, yes,
even in the same time zone. UM. We call this
show how to Citizen. We we interpret it as a verb,
as a way of being in society, as a way
of being part of a collective and contributing to that.
(42:30):
You are, obviously, to me, someone whose citizens hard right
and then the best possible way if you could pass
on some advice, how would you define citizen as a verb?
What does it mean to do? How does it mean
to be? Um? I'm reminded of my favorite quote from
the singer songwriter Lenna Cohen from Canada, who said in
(42:55):
the poem and a quote ring the bells that still
can ring, forget your perfect offering. There is a crack,
a crack in everything, and that's how the light gets in.
So to citizen is to be that light Poetician Audrey
(43:16):
Tongue with the Leonard Cohen. Okay, okay, minister, thank you,
minister Audrey Tongue for your time, pleasure. Is there something
else I should have asked you? No, I think this
is pretty complete, so I will add to maybe liftloin
(43:38):
prosper Yes, I want to let you win on a
little context for that interview because of Taiwan being so
(43:59):
far a that interview ended for me here in l
A at ten pm. And when I tell you that
I was vibrating at ten pm after that conversation. Literally
I had to go take a walk afterwards. I don't
understand how one person can be so inspiring and also
so humble. I think what really moves me is the
(44:23):
idea of being able to see, to really to visualize
how I connect with someone in an affirmative way, whether
it's a friend or a complete stranger. The dopamine from
that would so far outweigh a retweet in my echo
chamber that is social media. This concept of rough consensus.
(44:45):
It's really beautiful because nothing's perfect right, nothing's one size
fits all, but there are overlaps, and in those overlaps
that's where we innovate, where we learn, and most of all,
where we get excited to come together and use our
collective power. Next week, I talked to gen Z climate
(45:12):
activists Jamie Markolan about where tech fits into solving climate change. Hint,
it's not what I expected from a gen Z ear.
I think that there's a danger in putting too much
faith in innovating our way out of this, Like I
feel like there also has to be some respect for
the natural technologies. And now that I've returned to Earth
(45:44):
from Planet Audrey, it's time for some action. First, I
want you to think about your personal power. When have
you felt justified pushing against an authority in your life?
How did you do it and did you achieve your goal?
If not, why do you think no? And if so,
were there other unintended consequences? Next, I want you to
(46:08):
get informed about this idea of open government. It's all
well and good to say that government is we the people,
but what could that actually look like. One example is
Audrey's work, so we learn more about it at Digital
Minister dot t w and if you want to go deeper,
read the book Open Democracy by Helene Landmore. It's about
(46:32):
centering ordinary citizens in the democratic process. I actually saw
Helene speak recently and she reminded me of some things
that our season two guests Astra Taylor was saying about
how ancient Greeks conscripted random people into civil service. Let's
regain some imagination about our power. Find Helene's book in
(46:52):
our online bookstore at bookshop dot org, slash shop slash
how do citizen in search social media for the hashtag
open government to find more related thinkers and doers helping
us govern ourselves Finally, practice sharing your voice on an
issue you care about in a public forum, not just
social media though. For example, did you know you can
(47:15):
comment on upcoming federal regulations at regulations dot GOVN I'm
just logging in there, like dropping what's up all over
these notice for proposed rulemaking. It's exciting, but the real
action is local. So join a participatory budgeting initiative by
searching online for participatory budgeting near me, or put your
(47:35):
town or state's name there. Or try attending a virtual
or live city or neighborhood council meeting and offering feedback
during the public comments section. Use your voice to influence
a public issue. Flex that power. We've got links to
all of this and more at how to citizen dot
com and follow us on Instagram at how to Citizen.
(47:58):
Tag us in your own posts about your participation. Thanks.
How the Citizen with barrettun Day is a production of
I Heart Radio Podcasts and dust Light Productions. Our executive
producers are Me, barrettun Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusuf.
Our senior producer is Tamika Adams, our producer is Ali Kilts,
and our assistant producer Sam Paulson, Stephanie Cohne is our editor,
(48:21):
Valentino Rivera is our senior engineer, and Matthew Lai as
our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen, with additional original
music for season three from Andrew Clawson. This episode was
produced and sound designed by Ali Kilts. Special thanks to
Joel Smith from My Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia at
dust Light Productions.
Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a podcast
that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
This season is all about tech and how it can
bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
you the people using technology for so much more than
revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us.
(00:22):
Citizen Here in the US, the idea of social media
and democracy, well, I'm not sure they even belong in
the same sentence. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and read it.
They tend to just be echo chambers with an abundant
(00:42):
supply of the most niche groups, so you can be
surrounded by your own choir. But there is a country
where this isn't necessarily the case. Today. We're going to Taiwan.
I repeat thai Wan. The Taiwanese government has essentially put
(01:03):
its entire democratic system online and it works now. Of course,
they have some exceptional policies in place, like they've got
universal broadband as a human right, virtual town halls and
a phone line get this where citizens can talk to
(01:24):
real people in the government about their problems. And if
that still isn't enough for a Taiwanese citizen to have
their voice heard, they can schedule on one on one
meeting with the person at the center of all this.
Every Tuesday from ten am to ten pm, the Digital
Minister of Taiwan, Audrey Tongue, holds open office hours. Her
(01:48):
only request, you got to allow the conversation to be
recorded and uploaded online in the name of radical transparency.
And look, I'm not a citizen of Taiwan, but she
pen sold me in for some office hours of our own.
I say this without exaggeration. Audrey's accomplishments started at birth
(02:11):
due to a heart defect. As a toddler, she had
to train her body to keep her heart rate down
by practicing Daoist meditation techniques as a toddler. And when
it came to her education after discovering the Internet, that
did drop out once when I was eight, once when
I was ten, once when I was twelve. So anyway, yeah,
(02:33):
I I've had three kindergarten, six primary schools, and one
year of middle high serial drop out, if you will.
When I was in middle school, student was for a scene.
I talked to the head of the school saying, look,
I discovered this thing called the wild Web, and I
found out that the cutting edge knowledge is being created
(02:55):
on the web, and my textbooks were willfully out of date.
The head of the school, after she listened to me
for a couple of minutes describing this new thing called
the wild web, she said, okay, tomorrow, and you don't
have to go to my school anymore. Instead of eight
hours after school, you can't spend sixteen hours a day
during these She started her first company at age fifteen,
(03:20):
and that eventually led to her joining a community of
civic hackers technologists to innovate without permission, but in this
case not for financial gain or to prove they can
break into a system, but instead for the public good.
In after a series of protests in Taiwan, she was
appointed Taiwan's first Digital Minister, going from outsider to insider
(03:46):
hacker to cabinet minister. She's a believer in an advocate
for open data, open governance, and civil society government collaboration
without further ado. Audrey Tom Hello, Audrey, greetings, good luck
at time, good local time. Nice to meet you. Thank
(04:08):
you for joining us. You are the first cabinet minister
I will have ever had on any show of mine.
This is very exciting for me. Here's too many more
so it sounds like you grew up online? Is that
a fair way of describing choosing your education to happen
this way? Especially? That's right, I would say I I
migrated to the Internet when I was fourteen ish, so
(04:30):
I'm not a digital native, but a young immigrants, if
you will, young digital immigrant, digital migrant. So so what
has that meant for you? To have such early, intense
and regular access to this new world formerly new world?
And it's time? I was motivated by a open research
(04:50):
questions why do people who have never met each other
trust each other so quickly online? It's a phenomena called
swift trust. Of course, in the more antisocial coiners of
social media, it also means swift distrust. People come to
hate each other very intensely. Yes, we do. How does
that come about? I was very much motivated by that question,
(05:12):
so I found it a startup A year after I
dropped out and become a kind of serial entrepreneur and
explored through various ways. My first startup was the Taiwanese
equivalent of eBay, and later on moved to found many
other companies and all explored how to get people trust
(05:35):
each other reasonably online instead of on the spaces where
it's more antisocial that that's been my research topic for
the past twenty five years. I guess what are your
conclusions right now about the answer to that question, Well,
it needs to be fast, fair, and fun simultaneously. If
(05:56):
a space is fast in getting people's ideas into collective intelligence,
if the common good the shared value is derived quickly
in a fair fashion. And finally, if for each minute
of participation people feel there's an intrinsic fun in it,
then the phosphere fun ensures approse social interaction online fast, fair,
(06:21):
and fun. They all start with F, so there's like
a poetry to it. Like it the fun part. For example,
we apply to our counter disinformation strategy and time when
they call it humor over a rumor, Oh oh, I
like that one. UM. Early in your career, you were
part of the formation of something known as GOV zero.
(06:44):
What was GOV zero and why was it needed? So
GO zero was and still is. UM this idea of
forking the government. Now fork in free software means taking something,
not hitting it off, but taking it to a different direction,
with the hope, of course, that one day it's merged
(07:05):
back in. So for all the government websites in taide
one something that g o V that ke w oh yeah,
that gov websites. Yeah right. The zero folks just built
parallel shadow government websites. So for each digital service that
the people doesn't quite like, into the protesting they demonstrate
(07:26):
by changing oh to a zero in the browser bar,
and you get into the shadow government, which is more fast,
fair and fun. Okay, I want to play that back
and make sure I'm understanding what you're saying. Everyone listening
to this, we understand the concept of a government website
at that geo V. As you mentioned, they're not always
the greatest websites that many of us have experienced, So
(07:48):
go zero with you all. Initially we're doing was building
that zero websites, you know, that were mirror versions of
these government websites, offering the same information and services, but better, faster, fairer,
and more fun. That's exactly right. So for example, last February,
we were rationing out medical great masks. We all remember
(08:11):
the mask rationing. Yes, that's right, And and there's there's
a government website that tallies the availability of masks in
each and every pharmacy. Now, the equivalent of zero website
is an interactive map where you can see very quickly
which pharmacy near your residents still have some instack. And
as you queue in line, there's also chatbots voice assistance
(08:35):
that would ensure this fair distribution of masks. And it
is of course more fun. And this entire effort, this
this civic hacking effort with all volunteer that's right, Uh,
the volunteers. The number in like tens of thousands. And
once people think of something that the government isn't doing
very well, instead of protesting, we just do a demonstration
(08:58):
as a demo, like showing everyone that hey, this could
be done this much better. That's okay. That's a novel,
a creative and hyper useful form of activism where you
just you show them up and you do it better.
I want to know how you got into politics. A
big moment for you was the Sunflower Revolution. Right, several
(09:23):
hundred Taiwanese students are still occupying the island's parliament. They're
protesting against a wide ranging trade deal signed between the
Taiwanese government and China. A much seventies. One single congressman declare,
(09:43):
without anything, liberation. We've seen thirty seconds now don't let
the name Sunflower Revolution fool you. The path to a
digital democracy wasn't easy. As is often the case, big
change takes an upright in March, a group of students
(10:07):
climbed over the fence and occupied Taiwan's equivalent of the U. S.
Capitol building. Now, before your mind goes there is not
what you think. They didn't have guns. They had ethernet
cads and a plan to talk and be hurt students
far from you know, violently protesting. They occupied the Parliament's
(10:30):
t Terrian seat and started to delibrates the C S
S T A to trade agreement line by line with
anyone who cared to show up. Yeah, they were literally
reading through parliamentary decisions line by line in hopes of
finding consensus. But law enforcement they didn't see it that way.
(10:52):
M M. Their solution radical transparency. Audrey live stream the
occupation to the streets of Taipei for the public to witness,
so that people can see before their own eyes on
a large projection screen outside the street. Was actually happening
(11:15):
was a deliberation led by citizens within the parliament. So
there's no room for rumor to grab. Had we not
wired up the streets around the parliament. There will be
cols because people will believe in for example, the rumors
about the students. We've seen the parliament was being attacked.
There's a bunch of people who want to rush the
police because they falsely believed that the students were in addenda.
(11:40):
But because we weard it up sufficiently quickly, people can
check that it's actually not what's happening. This moment was
basically analog of zero. Instead of a shadow website, they
created a whole shadow parliament, showing the politicians in their
own house how it's done. And they did this day
(12:02):
in and day out, working to come up with their
own rough consensus on each issue, including the trade agreement. Then,
after three weeks of occupation, Parliament agreed to provide oversight
for trade deals with China and the occupation ended. But
the movement didn't stop there. In fact, many leaders in
(12:22):
government got on board. Two years later, the election outsted
the ruling party and made history by electing the first
female president sigh England. The government realized they had to
listen to the people, and who did they turn to?
Audrey Tom. This led to her role as Taiwan's first
(12:43):
Digital Minister at just thirty five years old, opening the
doors of Parliament to the hackers, the civic hackers, the
civic hackers. That's a very important acknowledges. Yes, not all hackers,
civic hackers. After the break of poetry reading by Minister Tongue, Yes, poetry.
(13:20):
You're not just a minister in department. You're the digital minister.
What does that job mean? And was there a digital
minister before you? No, I'm the first digital minister. I
wrote my own job description. Can you share your I
think I've read some of this job description, but can
you share your job description with me? Sure it's pinned
(13:42):
on my Twitter actually, so I'll just read it. When
we see the Internet of things, let's make it an
internet of bees. We see virtual reality, let's make it
a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let's make
it collaborative learning. When we see user experience, let's make
(14:06):
it about human experience. And whenever we hear that the
singularity is, let us always remember the plurality is here.
That's poetry, it is, I mean, politician, you're just call
yourself a poetician. You know you are full of innovations
(14:29):
and surprises. Minister One of the things that I've heard
about and the most excited to spend our time on
today is V Taiwan. Can you define what V Taiwan
is and how it's used in your society. V Taiwan
(14:50):
was actually the work of Meat as civic hacker UM
and I became Digital Minister around two years after which
so during those two years, for example, we worked on
a way to get people's voices where people can write
their own nuanced ideas about emerging issues like at the
(15:11):
time Uber. When Uber first came to Taiwan, they work
with drivers with no professional license called sharing economy, and
this of course incited many texts chriver to start the protest,
and instead of people just shouting at each other like
a showdown, we built a space called polish through Echaiwan
(15:33):
project where people can say I care about insurance and
up voted and downloaded each other, but with no reply button,
and then the rough consensus, just like in the Sunflower movement,
end up getting ratified. So Uber is now a legal
taxi company in Taiwan. You're describing an online community platform
(15:54):
where people are sharing their opinions, their thoughts, their feedback
or public services sometimes or private services like Uber, but
you're using terms like rough consensus. And I experience a
platform that lets me share my opinions about all kinds
of things. It's called Twitter, it's called Facebook, but the
word consensus never comes to mind. So can you talk
(16:19):
to me about how the Taiwan, in doing this surveying
of the public and collecting all kinds of input, doesn't
descend into a Twitter or Facebook like disaster zone. Well,
as I mentioned, there's no reply button, right, no reply
button that'll do it? Okay, Yeah, that that's that's really
(16:42):
d D trick um Impolis, which you can check out,
is a free software tool instead of the reply button. Uh,
there's a vote down vote, and there's this visualization. Don't worry.
I know this is a podcast and you can't see
the visualization's Audrey talking about. So I'm gonna help you.
(17:04):
V Taiwan uses something called quadratic voting to build rough consensus.
Think of two axes, and X that runs horizontally and
a Y that runs vertically. Yeah, I'm taking you back
to middle school. The X axis is your yea or nay,
and the y is how strongly you feel about your yea,
your name. So Let's say your town is voting on
(17:25):
a citywide compost collection measure. On one end of your
X axis would be a yes. Compost on the other end, Nope,
I ain't composting. But it doesn't stop there because the
Y axis gauges how strong do you feel about those votes.
Maybe you plan to vote no because you don't know
that much about composting, but you heard it might stink
(17:46):
up the city. You'd probably fall somewhere in the middle
of the Y axis. The same could be said for
someone who's voting yes. They don't know much, but they
hear it's quote unquote good for the environment, they too
would fall some where in the middle of the Y axes.
Once again, it doesn't stop there because users can continue
to submit statements on composting, and the more you participate
(18:10):
by up or down voting those statements, the more refined
your placement gets within this grid. So composting will take
the equivalent of one million cars off the road that
might lead to an up vote, or the budget will
come out of the parks department that could lead to
a down vote. The point is, as users start to
(18:31):
form opinions on composting, wherever you fall on these scales,
you get placed within one of the four quadrants, and
as the votes tally up, you start to see clusters
of like minded people, clusters that would be invisible to
you in a purely binary guest no world. And that's
where the rough consensus begins to form. This moment brought
(18:53):
to you by Edge of Tune day, You're welcome. So
it became a challenge, a game to find the things
that could convince people at the other aisle, and people
managed to agree on so after three weeks or so
of unlike deliberation, we would end up always with this
picture where people agree to disagree on a few ideological
(19:16):
things like whether Ubert qualified as sharing economy or just
give economy, But for most of the ideas, most people
agree actually with most of their neighbors. It's just a
more antisocial corner of social media or mainstream media does
not report those consensus around registration, insurance, not undercutting exist meters,
and so on. I've heard many social scientists say that
(19:41):
we actually agree a lot more than we know, and
it sounds like you've got a system which visualizes that.
It shows us how close we are to our neighbors,
even if they're not our physical neighbors. Is it fair
to say you've kind of gamified consensus building. Yes, it's fair.
And I would also say that people compete to get
(20:04):
other people to agree to them, not by posting compromises,
but posting innovations like new ideas that would unify people
previously of different aisles. But if people keep shouting at
each other on the ideological points and there's no remaining
bandwidth to innovate like that, If the government is faced
(20:27):
with one hundred decisions and kind of a random easy
number legislative policy regulatory for how many of them are
you using v Taiwan two be open to citizen input.
So the answer is all the petitions, all the regulations,
(20:47):
all the budget items are up for public commentary and debate.
After I moved into the cabinet as the Digital Minister, Vita,
I want kind of get merged back into the governments
and we call it Join Join the g O v
the t W. We also have a petition side like
(21:07):
we the People, where people can post new ideas. Instead
of waiting for the government to propose, people can propose
their own ideas, like changing the time zone of Taiwan
or banning plastic straws for bubble sees takeouts, which are
a real petitions. Uh. And then um, they get the
(21:28):
ministry of point by point answer if they get five
joining signature and and how you can since my um, surprise,
my incredulity even a little bit, How seriously do people
who work in government take all this beautiful visualized consensus
(21:52):
of the people who don't work in government. Is it
just like, oh, that's cute, the public wants something anyway,
I'm gonna do what I want to do? Or is
there accountability to follow through on these public consensus conclusions? Well,
if the petition did not get five thousand signatures, then
(22:13):
often it gets ignored. That's of course true, because it
means it more or less serves only a handful of people,
and these people have not yet articulated the common purpose.
So the majority of petitions did not meet five thousands thresholds.
But after it meets the five thousand threshold, there is
(22:34):
regulatory level commitment from each minister that they will send
a team what we call participation officers or pos, and
around a hundred of these people in each ministry. They
are legally bound to answer it in the point by
point fashion. And if this spuns across different ministries or
(22:55):
could only be solved in the inter agency way, then
I personally have most collaborative meetings twice amount to get
those ideas from the civil society that benefits more than
one ministry, because a single ministry cannot promise to answer
them all. What type of regulation or rule or government action?
(23:18):
More broadly are you most proud of or excited about?
That is the product of a v Taiwan process. One
of the earlier successes is, of course the ratification of
UBER and later on extending that to a more general
platform economic principle. And there's also many environment related issues
(23:43):
like banning plastic strolls from take how the public say
that's actually something that's ratified And the petitioner was I
think not even eighteen, just turned seventeen when she petitioned that.
How do you make sure that a system like this
is it gamed or abused? Someone just gets a bunch
(24:05):
of bots or a bunch of their friends too jack
up the activity on a particular petition point to make
sure it gets taken seriously, quote unquote, First of all,
one has to register using the SMS number if someone
try to get five thousand SIM cards, they will get
noticed by the NIM only launching folks very quickly. So
(24:27):
I'm not worried about that. And I imagine you know
those people. Yeah, I do have those people, that's right.
So each person, of course participate using the SMS number,
but they can to student names as so the petitioner,
the young one that's this plastic straw banding. We only
knew her as I love elephants and elephants love me
(24:49):
for a very long time until she decided to show up.
This is killing me. This is amazing. Um. What do
you think v Taiwan has done for the relationship of
the Taiwanese people to each other and to their government. Yeah,
(25:09):
I believe that this idea of social innovation. Previously, people think,
oh they can join this community in their neighborhoods and
to maybe redesign the park together or things like that.
But I guess joint platform show that people who care
about the same thing can also get this neighborhood's relationship
(25:31):
very quickly online and act in a way that they
would on the physical town hall. We have this digital
public infrastructure that functions the same as the town hall
so that they're not forced to deliberate about important civic
topics in the digital equivalent of nightclubs like Facebook. You
(25:53):
just call Facebook and nightclub. This is just amazing. It's amazing. Um,
I don't know how many future forward looking innovations you
could put into one person into one position, but you were,
you were going for some kind of metal, some kind
of gold medal for maximum innovation in civics and people
(26:17):
powered government. Uh. We we got blockchain up in here
now with the theory, and we got quadratic voting, We've
got participatory budgeting, civic hacking. This is like the mecca
of of innovation and government services. But I also I'm
trying to understand how within Taiwan do you have a
(26:39):
sense for what share of the public is engaged in
this new digitally enabled form of self governing. I believe
most of the people are aware that they can actually
set agenda for the ministry level decisions around pandemic prevention,
especially just by picking up the phone. So a lot
(27:00):
majority of people, I would say tens of millions of people,
because our ENTI bearer is really low. If you pick
up your phone and call it this toll free number
one night you too, and speak your mind about how
you would like our counter epidemic effort to get better,
and a sympathetic listener from the call center records that
(27:20):
and write it up, and the next day on the
two PM press conference, your idea may be implemented very
quickly on this live stream because we've lowered the participation threshold,
and the phone lines just flooded with like foul language
and hates because I'm just trying to imagine it's deployed
in the US, and I don't hear thoughtful rants, you
(27:43):
know people. I just see people screaming falsehoods into their
phone all day. Yeah, and that's because of the frustration
of not getting properly listened to. Right, it's venting, uh,
this previous frustration. But because there's more than two million
cars last year alone, we take them very seriously. Right
(28:06):
at last April, there was a young boy that calls saying, hey,
you're rationing out mass But all I got was pink
ones and all the boys in my class got navy blue.
Once I don't want to wear pink to school, I
refused to go to school. Do something about it. And
then the very next day on two p M press conference,
all the medical officers, including Ministruction were Pink and Mstr Chin.
(28:27):
That helps. Mr even said Pink Panther was my childhood hero.
So so the boy became the most employing his class
for oh, he has the color that the heroes were,
and the heroes hero it is there and and our
the idea that I could call and leave a voicemail
(28:49):
and know that I was heard because a pretty high
ranking government official. In fact, many the next day in
this case are referencing my message. Do you have have
some very widely deployed natural language processing running too? Makes
sense of all this audio not just the texting and
(29:09):
the typing I get it's already kind of a machine readable,
but just a bunch of audio files as well. How
are you processing that? And very large call center and
it's not voicemail. Actually I think more than nine of
them get into a sympathetic listener. So um, it's like
a human being a human being professional and listening and
(29:30):
answering in real time, okay, And we work on the
assistant to support them like frequently ask questions and so on.
By the end of the day, is that people who
want to contribute to the society. Many volunteers actually working
in these call sentens. Okay, okay, this is Um. I
(29:50):
I don't know whether I'm very proud of what you're
doing in Taiwan or just exceedingly disappointed at what we're
not doing in the state. The fact that I'm responding
with such shock and awe and your delivery is just
the calmest thing, like like it's natural, of course. Yeah,
we're just staff, sympathetic people on phone lines for our
(30:13):
citizens to talk like. I can't even finish saying that
without laughing. Again. Congratulations, minister, Um. Can you tell me
about presidential Hackathan? Sure? And I'm aware that we're in
the future. Um, thank you for acknowledging that I'm not
entirely on another planet, just in a different time zone.
(30:36):
That's right, we're time zone travelers. So yeah. The presidential
Every year, the president gave trophies to five teams, each
one working on the sort of good zero like civic
innovation for three months and through quadratic voting, Uh, they
proved that their ideas has marriage in a smaller region.
(30:59):
Helemeta Sin for example, using a app to motivate people
instead of buying new plastic bottles using existing bortos to
get free refills from the local community to reduce common footprint.
East Monscale experiments, once they received the trophy from the President,
certainly become presidential promises, so I, like any executive agenda,
(31:20):
must be implemented within the presidential term. For example, readd
our entire universal healthcare system which is pretty to begin with,
to allow cure code helen medicine, which is very useful
not just during the pandemic, but also for the remote islands,
indigenous places and so one and all thanks to a
(31:41):
small scale experiment by a very remote island which suffer
a helicopter crash and decided to innovate. If you've been
running the hakathon for four years and there are five winners,
that's twenty winning ideas. That's right. How many of those
twenty have actually been implemented by the president or other
parts of the government. UM I believe nineteen are implemented
(32:05):
right now. And the other one because it requires collaboration
with the anti money laundering people. It's a mission learning
algorithm to preemptively, like Minority Report, identify money laundering activities
that still in the works. Are there people who are
(32:26):
opposed to what you're doing with within Taiwanese society? Are
there folks like this, we don't want this, We don't
want the computers use this way, This is too much
for government? Like is there resistance to whatso far sounds
like a very happy, very positive, very effective experience. In
(32:47):
a sense, we are the resistance so um to to
answer a question directly, there are people who initially feel
threatened by the vito it's use of deliberative democracy, and
they are the professional representatives in the parliament or city council.
They rightfully feel excluded from this crowd law agenda setting thing,
(33:13):
and kind of fear that it will create populism to
take their well deliberated norms away and just pass whatever
the majority of people seems happy with and destroy democracy
and things like that. So it was a real fear
in twenty four seine. But then after twenty sixteen, which
I became the Digital Ministry, introduced those platforms, they start
(33:37):
to see that we're not taking over the legislative power.
What we're doing is essentially doing additional research and development
before something that's ratified. What we've done is to get
people's real feelings which cannot all get passed through the
parliament to get people with the real feelings and needs
(34:00):
and requirements and want to also join as co creators
to propose solution by at the end of the day,
the allocation of budget resources, the presidential mandates and so on,
these remain intact and democratically accountable. So in design thinking terms,
we take care of the defined and the discovery part
(34:23):
the first diamond, but the development and the delivery are
still in the representative democracy. We have a similar process
here in the US. It doesn't involve as much technology.
It's a group of people called lobbyists and they figure
out what the legislators are supposed to do. It doesn't
always match the will of the people on the ground,
(34:44):
but it's probably just some bugs in the code and
we're working it out. I'm sure we'll be as representative
as Taiwan sometime in the near future. It's the great
American experiment. Now I know it doesn't sound like it,
(35:05):
but I can confirm that we do indeed live on
the same planet when we come back. We talked about
Audrey's future outlook on the time when the government and
how this can hopefully be applied to the United States.
(35:31):
Mm hmmm, where do you see Taiwan's government in twenty years, Um,
it will be higher, I guess, stronger, faster together, higher
by about sixty centimeters. Um. It's a joke because towns
caught between the Eurasian plate and the Philippines sea plate
(35:53):
on the signs, and we got a lot of earthquakes
when they bumped together. But through yeah, I wasn't. I
was like, I got a rising sea levels jokes. It's
rising plate tectonics joke. So it's rising faster than sea
levels at this moment anyway. So yeah, but but those
earthquakes um is metaphoric. Right. We're caught between very different
(36:15):
ideologies UM. For example, the privacy and personal data protection.
We've got people who strongly believe in a more civiliance
capitalism ideas of using data and it's called the US style.
But there's also a sizable chunk who remember and believes
in the authority Hearian days in Taiwan, who believe in
(36:36):
a more state controlled, state sponsored way of data use
and so on. So we have to endure those ideological
earthquakes and always innovate. For example, merriage equality, I think
we're still the only Asian jurisdiction that implemented merriage quality.
We use the joint platform, among other methods, to get
(36:57):
people's collaborative preferences into a new invention where when two
same sex people wed, they only wed as individuals, but
their families don't wet. There's no kinship relation. And this
innovation UH is felt as good enough for everyone. So
after twenty yes, after many such innovations at the top
(37:18):
of Taiwan the Yushan Mountain, which grows by three sentimentaries
every year, I guess we'll just keep growing and pointing
sat work. Where do you see UH the U S
government In twenty years, I guess the great American experiment
of reinventing democracy digitally will will catch up. I mean,
(37:38):
there really is no reason why people have to viciously
attack each other online. It's not a function of the
people or the water, is the function of the space. UH.
In design terms, this is UH an anti social design
or pro social design. So once people get into this
um habit of posting online, I guess people will be
(38:02):
able to make the difference between the digital equivalent of
town halls, the public infrastructure that I've just mentioned, which
in TWI sixteen, for the first time in Taiwan's history,
is classified as infrastructure budget. And I understand that the
US to doing something very similar at this very moment,
and people would not feel natural anymore to have pacivic
(38:24):
discussion in the digital nightclubs with you know, people shouting
to get heard and smoke field rooms with toxic drinks
and private bouncers. Toxic drinks and private bouncers. Again, the
best description of Facebook I've ever heard. This idea of
rough consensus. To me, it feels I like it because
(38:45):
it's ambitious with humility, right, you know, I think a
lot of folks think we want everybody to agree with
each other. Will never get that, so why bother and
the good enough nature of the consensus. We're in desperate
need of even rough consensus here in the US we
(39:08):
have a very big political divide. Are there things you
think that our political system can learn from what you've
learned in the Timeanese political systems? There was a police
conversation of virtual town hall in Bowling Green, Kentucky a
couple of years ago Bowling Green, Kentucky. Yes, and regardless
(39:29):
of which party they identify, with everyone thinks that we
should put the arts into science, technology, engineering, and maths
instead of stand let's make esteem. That's something people agree on.
There should be more broadband vendor choices for a better service,
and so on. So look, I do believe that those
(39:50):
ideologies help shape some of the debates. But there are
like the arts teachers or the broadband connections. There are
things that are just you know, infrastructure. There are things
that in a cultural or scientific or educational sense, that's
broadly a rough consensus. It's just that you have to
ask about that specifically, and then you get those little
(40:13):
hanging fruits. And when the mayors are the township leaders
or governors adopt those idea, it also improved their chance
of getting reelected. Mm hmm. Well, how do you think
about the the role of technology versus the role of
humans in implementing positive, useful, pro social technology to help
(40:40):
us govern ourselves better. I believe technologies aren't here to
connect people with other people, so which is why I
call a assistive intelligence. They play the role of my
eye class for example, which enabled me to see you better,
but my eyeglass never pops out A uncle ustible advertised
(41:01):
mephor ten seconds, right, that would not be aligned to
my values. I'm sure someone is designing you know, sponsored
glasses very soon, right, and I can fix it myself
or take it to some repaired person uh nearby. And
that means that it's accountable to also the person using it.
(41:21):
It's not locking uh in my choice of vendors, and
so I don't have to pay someone a million dollar
license features to fix my eye glass. So with these
important UM guarantees of assistiveness, which includes of course accountability
and alignment, it means that technologies stay customizable, which is
(41:43):
why it's not perfect, it's just good enough. And how
to make good enough better lines in the edges right,
and the people closest to the pain for the people
using those technologies, there must be the ultimate arbit of
how to modify those technologies. So without that, it's not
assistive intelligence anymore, it would be authoritarian intelligence. And I
(42:07):
think both paths are possible into some degree. Both paths
will be pursued depending on which part of the world
we're talking about, even in the same time zone, yes, yes,
even in the same time zone. UM. We call this
show how to Citizen. We we interpret it as a verb,
as a way of being in society, as a way
of being part of a collective and contributing to that.
(42:30):
You are, obviously, to me, someone whose citizens hard right
and then the best possible way if you could pass
on some advice, how would you define citizen as a verb?
What does it mean to do? How does it mean
to be? Um? I'm reminded of my favorite quote from
the singer songwriter Lenna Cohen from Canada, who said in
(42:55):
the poem and a quote ring the bells that still
can ring, forget your perfect offering. There is a crack,
a crack in everything, and that's how the light gets in.
So to citizen is to be that light Poetician Audrey
(43:16):
Tongue with the Leonard Cohen. Okay, okay, minister, thank you,
minister Audrey Tongue for your time, pleasure. Is there something
else I should have asked you? No, I think this
is pretty complete, so I will add to maybe liftloin
(43:38):
prosper Yes, I want to let you win on a
little context for that interview because of Taiwan being so
(43:59):
far a that interview ended for me here in l
A at ten pm. And when I tell you that
I was vibrating at ten pm after that conversation. Literally
I had to go take a walk afterwards. I don't
understand how one person can be so inspiring and also
so humble. I think what really moves me is the
(44:23):
idea of being able to see, to really to visualize
how I connect with someone in an affirmative way, whether
it's a friend or a complete stranger. The dopamine from
that would so far outweigh a retweet in my echo
chamber that is social media. This concept of rough consensus.
(44:45):
It's really beautiful because nothing's perfect right, nothing's one size
fits all, but there are overlaps, and in those overlaps
that's where we innovate, where we learn, and most of all,
where we get excited to come together and use our
collective power. Next week, I talked to gen Z climate
(45:12):
activists Jamie Markolan about where tech fits into solving climate change. Hint,
it's not what I expected from a gen Z ear.
I think that there's a danger in putting too much
faith in innovating our way out of this, Like I
feel like there also has to be some respect for
the natural technologies. And now that I've returned to Earth
(45:44):
from Planet Audrey, it's time for some action. First, I
want you to think about your personal power. When have
you felt justified pushing against an authority in your life?
How did you do it and did you achieve your goal?
If not, why do you think no? And if so,
were there other unintended consequences? Next, I want you to
(46:08):
get informed about this idea of open government. It's all
well and good to say that government is we the people,
but what could that actually look like. One example is
Audrey's work, so we learn more about it at Digital
Minister dot t w and if you want to go deeper,
read the book Open Democracy by Helene Landmore. It's about
(46:32):
centering ordinary citizens in the democratic process. I actually saw
Helene speak recently and she reminded me of some things
that our season two guests Astra Taylor was saying about
how ancient Greeks conscripted random people into civil service. Let's
regain some imagination about our power. Find Helene's book in
(46:52):
our online bookstore at bookshop dot org, slash shop slash
how do citizen in search social media for the hashtag
open government to find more related thinkers and doers helping
us govern ourselves Finally, practice sharing your voice on an
issue you care about in a public forum, not just
social media though. For example, did you know you can
(47:15):
comment on upcoming federal regulations at regulations dot GOVN I'm
just logging in there, like dropping what's up all over
these notice for proposed rulemaking. It's exciting, but the real
action is local. So join a participatory budgeting initiative by
searching online for participatory budgeting near me, or put your
(47:35):
town or state's name there. Or try attending a virtual
or live city or neighborhood council meeting and offering feedback
during the public comments section. Use your voice to influence
a public issue. Flex that power. We've got links to
all of this and more at how to citizen dot
com and follow us on Instagram at how to Citizen.
(47:58):
Tag us in your own posts about your participation. Thanks.
How the Citizen with barrettun Day is a production of
I Heart Radio Podcasts and dust Light Productions. Our executive
producers are Me, barrettun Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusuf.
Our senior producer is Tamika Adams, our producer is Ali Kilts,
and our assistant producer Sam Paulson, Stephanie Cohne is our editor,
(48:21):
Valentino Rivera is our senior engineer, and Matthew Lai as
our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen, with additional original
music for season three from Andrew Clawson. This episode was
produced and sound designed by Ali Kilts. Special thanks to
Joel Smith from My Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia at
dust Light Productions.
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